BMW: Supporting Art Internationally and in Russia. Lecture by Thomas Girst

Date

Schedule

19:30–21:00

Place

Garage Auditorium

DESCRIPTION

As part of Garage’s long-term partnership program with BMW Group Russia, BMW’s Head of Cultural Engagement, expert in arts and culture management, Thomas Girst will give a talk on how commercial partnerships can influence international culture and foster its development.

Drawing on the company’s history of supporting arts over the past decades, Girst will show how a joint effort by cultural institutions and commercial brands can facilitate major to support museums, festivals, cinema, theatre, and contemporary art.

BMW Group is known for its support of culture and has collaborated with some of the world’s biggest museums, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Tate Modern in London and the National Gallery in Berlin. BMW supports the Berlin Biennale, as well as a number of film and music festivals and young artists. Another connection the car manufacturer has to the art world is its BMW Art Car project that lists among its participants artists like Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, and César Manrique.

The winner of Garage and BMW’s joint grant program Art & Technology will be announced at the end of the talk. The program, launched in 2017, supports emerging artists and art groups working with information and engineering technologies, and in the field of art & science.

ABOUT THE LECTURER

 

Thomas Girst (b. 1971) is the Head of Cultural Engagement at BMW Group.

He studied Art History, American Studies, and German Literature at Hamburg University and New York University (DAAD Scholarship), and holds a Ph.D. from Hamburg University. He lectures at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich and the Academy of Fine Arts Munich as well as at the Academy of Applied Sciences in Zurich. He has written for TAZ, Financial Times, Tate Modern, Kunsthalle Schirn, ICA, The Andy Warhol Foundation, Art in America, Frieze, The Art Newspaper. From 2005 to 2009 he was a member of the Board for Arts Sponsorship within the Association of Arts and Culture of the German Economy at the Federation of German Industries, and since 2010 he has sat on their panel for literature. He is a member of the Board of Spielmotor e.V., as well as for the Association of the Architecture Museum, Munich. He has been a cultural ambassador for Porzellan Manufaktur Nymphenburg since 2012 and has headed Cultural Engagement at BMW Group since 2003. In 2016, Girst received the “European Cultural Manager of the Year” award from Causales. He lives and works in Munich.

HOW TO TAKE PART

This talk for art professionals will be in English with simultaneous interpretation into Russian.

The talk will be broadcast online.